Slime mould: The fundamental mechanisms of biological cognition

The slime mould Physarum polycephalum has been used in developing unconventional computing devices for in which the slime mould played a role of a sensing, actuating, and computing device. These devices treated the slime mould as an active living substrate, yet it is a self-consistent living creature which evolved over millions of years and occupied most parts of the world, but in any case, that living entity did not own true cognition, just automated biochemical mechanisms. To rehabilitate slime mould from the rank of a purely living electronics element to a creature of thoughts we are analyzing the cognitive potential of P. polycephalum. We base our theory of minimal cognition of the slime mould on a bottom up approach, from the biological and biophysical nature of the slime mould and its regulatory systems using frameworks such as Lyon's biogenic cognition, Muller, di Primio-Lengeler modifiable pathways, Bateson's patterns that connect framework, Maturana's autopoietic network, or proto-consciousness and Morgan's Canon. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.